Microsoft Visual Studio C++ Compiler

Microsoft Visual Studio is a good compiler for developing Windows
applications. Although Visual Studio presents a ton of choices to the user
when first starting out (for instance, there are a lot of different project
types), the amount of choice gives a good idea of the overall scope of this
tool. This is a truly high-end compiler and it also comes with Microsoft's
Visual Studio IDE, which many people swear by.

For Windows programming, there's nothing better than Visual Studio--
it come with a pretty powerful IDE including the basics such as syntax
highlighting and code formatting, nice features like keyword completion and
the ability to get the type for any variable, and a great debugger. It is
expensive, but if you want to program for Windows, it's a good choice.

Getting Visual Studio

If you're a student, you may be able to get Visual Studio for free from Microsoft DreamSpark. I'd definitely check this out first!